


Splinters

by hellscabanaboy



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Abuse, Dissociation, Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 00:35:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellscabanaboy/pseuds/hellscabanaboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sei has always known he has talent. But as for power, that's never meant anything at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Splinters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mithrigil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/gifts).



Sei has always known that he has power.

He remembers the first time his hair was cut only vaguely, like a song he can sing but can't remember learning. But he's always known what it is to look people in the eye and see them, all the parts of them, ready to be built up all around him.

Love me, he says - doesn't even have to say it, when it's everywhere in the eyes of a boy growing up in a sea of fluorescent lights and electrodes and the clinical hands of lab technicians. And their eyes and their minds grow warmer around him, and if there's still nothing they can do to take him away from it, at least it's easier when something is warm.

And before long those people leave, and he knows he won't see them again. And new technicians come, with cold hands and colder eyes, and when he looks into them he's cut off before he even starts to see. There's a mind there, or something like it, but it's like trying to climb the stark white wall of the laboratory, blank and impervious.

"What's wrong with you," he asks, chilled into bafflement.

"I'm an android," replies the technician, in the same calm, patient voice as he might say it's time for your dinner or now get up on the exam table, there's a good boy, "and that's a very rude question, dear. Try to behave yourself, if you want to be around humans again."

Behave yourself turns out to mean keeping his eyes low, a sheath of obedience around the weapon that is his mind. It means obeying the technicians, even when what they say makes him sick. It means not being here, not being in the way of what they do with his mind, and Sei puts himself to the task with all his might. He excels.

He grows older, but hardly bigger, learns to make himself small. He never learns to stop saying love me, but he learns that it doesn't matter. And finally, as promised, they bring him someone new.

Toue is tall, crisp; he almost thinks elegant, having never before seen anything that might be called that. He leans down to nod his head to Sei, and Sei ignores everything he's been taught, looks straight in his eyes and wraps himself in the blanket of his mind. Somebody. Anybody. Love me.

The worst part is that it works. There's nothing in Toue's mind that's not human, and he can slide into it, build it into the shape he still calls love. And Sei can't help but love anyone in return whose mind he touches, at least a little, but now he knows what kind of thing human love can be.

He has always known he has talent. But as for power, that's never meant anything at all.

***

"Make him try this one, Virus," Trip says excitedly. "He'll look so cute in it, won't he?"

"That's a dress, idiot," says Virus.

Trip and Virus, he's told, are no older than him - though like nearly everyone else, they're bigger - and so, he's told, they're his friends. So that's what he thinks when he looks at them, and they mold around that in their own way. After knowing Toue, it doesn't even bother him anymore.

"It's okay," he says quietly, "it's pretty." Toue showers him with gifts, stuffed toys and dolls as though he were a child half his age, and all the ornament that he could possibly want. It's a kind of love as simplistic as in a picture book, the best kind of love that Toue has to offer. He doesn't know what to make of it. But Virus and Trip seem to, and he suspects that it's the best kind of friendship they can offer, as well.

Besides, it is pretty, a fluffy, frill mass of red and pink that's totally alien amidst the stark clean surfaces of the Oval Tower. It moves as he walks, and when he tangles his fingers in the skirts for something to hold onto, the layers of fabric rustling through the air and against his skin. Sei doesn't look into mirrors, not if he can help it, but looking down he feels, at last, like he can see himself.

"You're right," says Virus' voice from behind him. "He is cute."

"I told you," Trip retorts. "Besides, doesn't being a girl fit him better?"

Sei doesn't want to hear what he means by that. He worries that it might be true. So instead he sits down, watching closely how his skirt poofs up around his legs, and says as firmly as he can muster "Won't you tell me about what you've done since last I saw you?"

Virus and Trip are the only ones who will talk to him about the world outside the Oval Tower. From the way they relish it, he doesn't know how much is the truth. But it's all he has, so he listens with relish nevertheless.

"Right, says Trip, straddling a chair and waving his hand as he launches into his story. Virus is still rooting through his things, finding the frilliest accessories and holding them up to Sei's body to evaluate, as though he's a child with an exciting new doll.

But it's better to be a doll than a weapon, and if there's no real care involved, the pretense of it is enough for Sei to hold on to. So he closes his eyes, and listens, and lets everything else flow away, until he can almost forget that he's pretending at all.

***

The woman they bring in this time is barely older than Sei, not more than twenty at the most. He doesn't recognize her clothing, but that doesn't mean much, only that she's from outside of Platinum Jail. She looks around with darting eyes, takes in the gleaming white walls, the monitors spread all across the room. Looks at the boy sitting on the counter in front of her, and when she meets Sei's eyes her own expression goes from fear, to pity, to contentment.

"You know what to do," says the tech into his ear.

He always imagines it should sicken him to see the love in the faces of people who have never seen him before, when all he can do is twist them to Toue's will. Instead it feels tender, like he's holding them closer to his chest than he's ever been able to clutch one of his stuffed toys. It's the least he can do, when their mind is in his hands.

"Please," he says quietly, holding the young woman's gaze, "I'd like you to stop breathing."

The woman's eyes flicker in an attempt at protest. Her mind does no such thing. It builds itself anew around its words, restructures itself again and again until it places them before life itself. Everything after that is a technicality. But he keeps his eyes locked on hers for the minutes until she dies, keeps her in the shelter of his mind as long as he can.

The techs are babbling in the background, pointing at the monitors and bringing up charts that mean nothing to him, and one of them adjusts the electrodes attached to his skull. Other than that, he may as well not be here. No one notices the weapon, or its victim.

It's unnatural for him to kill. His mind screams at it, and he can't help but wonder, if he could resist even a little, if that would be enough to hold himself back. But there's power in it, too, in burying himself in the mind of another so deep that it turns inside out for him, lets him make it into something it can't survive.

He hates it. But not as much as he wants to.

They lead him to lie down, after that, and they hardly need to sedate him before he's gone, his mind fleeing as far as he can get from what it has become. The network is a comforting hum of information, almost as though he can hear human voices, and usually it's easy to lose himself in it, but now the sick feeling doesn't leave him wherever he goes. He has long since stopped wishing not to be involved in Toue's crimes. It makes no difference whether he does it of his own accord or not. But he doesn't want to take anything for himself from it. Not even power.

It takes a long time before he starts to splinter. But he hadn't wanted to wake up, anyway.

***

It isn't the next time Sei wakes - or at least, he doesn't think so. In between he's dreamt of hard light and metal, and of balls where he dances with so many people that the feel of their mind around his blends together until he can't tell them apart any more. In between he's grown to be able to feel the bones protruding from his hands, and it's not that that tells him he's grown thinner.

Toue is standing over him, beaming with a pride that chills Sei into wakefulness. Next to him is another figure, and not entirely a human one, but that doesn't make it any less familiar.

"Meet Usui," says Toue, and when Sei forces himself to look he sees a multitude of lithe snakelike arms, a voluptuous feminine body. And his own face, staring back at him without reservation. "My new Allmate. But not merely that, of course."

Sei flinches back involuntarily, and regrets it immediately when Toue clicks his tongue at him. He doesn't want to be part of this. But he is, moreso than ever.

"It's you," Toue says, and Usui nods his - her head to him and smiles, metallic and numb and, of course, perfect. "A part of you, that is. Not as lovely as the original, of course, but close."

Toue looks at him with a mask of fondness, but it's Usui who reaches out, places a hand on his face. On his hip. Another gliding down his neck. Sei doesn't move, just flicks his eyes upwards - across silk fabric clinging to lush curves, round where he's thin, firm where he's weak. A heavy golden collar across her shoulders, winding down her arms, at once adornment and bondage.

A face that's like looking into a mirror. Sei doesn't look into mirrors.

When he meets her eyes there's nothing there, nothing at all no matter how he looks, but it's not the blank wall of the android, or Toue's too real, too human coldness. Just an empty pit, down and down as far as he can see, and when he reaches the bottom he can't tell anymore if he's looking at Usui or himself. His own face is thin and pale, the mirror of Usui casting light on all its faults, and the frills and bows dotting his outfit only emphasize how slight he's grown.

He's taken refuge in them nearly all his life, a smatter of color against the stark white of Toue's world and the only thing he owns. He starts to hate them. Anything can be a binding, in Toue's hands.

"--so glad to discover this new talent of yours," Toue is saying. "I confessed I had hoped for such a thing, but the researchers told me there'd been no evidence for it. But you've exceeded our hopes, Sei."

His hand is on Sei's shoulder, tangled in the bow on the shoulder of his blouse. The other rests on Usui's collar. And Usui takes hold of him with one more set of unexpectedly strong arms, pulls him close, and Sei has already forgotten which one of them is the doll.

***

"You should let me show you sometime. The lives you've created."

Toue's private rooms are like a refuge from Oval Tower, lavishly furnished in velvet and mahogany and free from the glare of the laboratories. It's as much a mask as anything of Toue's. Sei, who knows his mind, knows it better than anyone. But it's the only refuge he can hope for, so Sei goes willingly.

No place is a refuge from Toue himself. He knows better than to hope for that.

The massive four-poster bed is enough to dwarf Sei where he perches on it, dressed in simple black and curled into himself. He tries not to listen - he tries to sleep, or disappear - but the words taunt him nevertheless.

"You've birthed more than half a dozen new life forms, Sei. Parts of yourself, and yet so much more. You have much to be proud of."

It was more than that. So many more of what he might have been, strewn across the network like shards of a mirror. For every piece they chip off a dozen facets might slough away in its wake; parts he hates, parts he loves, for all the difference it makes. None of them are truly lost. But not all remains, either.

"I don't need to," he says automatically. There's no point hiding his revulsion. If he wants to, he can see them any time - stretch out his consciousness and feel what they're being subjected to. He tries not to be aware of it, but if he's honest, a part of him always is.

"There's no need to be so upset."

Toue's standing close now, close enough to block out even the soft light of the room. There's something comfortable about that, at least. Without Usui present, he only has two hands to lay on him, but the crisp wool of his jacket brushes against Sei's face when he runs his fingers through his hair, and the scent of his cologne is on every breath. Everywhere. Everywhere.

Not that that's any different than it ever is.

His shirt is thin enough to feel the heat of Toue's fingers against his ribs, and he wonders, suddenly, if they would feel less out of place if it were Usui's curves they rested against rather than his own hard bones. He doubts it. But he can't be sure.

"You don't need to hide from it." Everything Toue says is a pronouncement, but this one is quiet, close into Sei's ear, as though he meant to speak directly into his mind. "Your power is precious, Sei. You are precious. Or don't you think life is something to be held dear?"

Sei doesn't answer. And Toue wouldn't be the man he is if he didn't notice something like that, but all he does is bend his head, his fingers at Sei's belt, brushing aside his skirt, and Sei feels the curve of his smile against his collarbone.

"It's ironic," he says, "that you should seem so unhappy, when you're instrumental in the happiness of so many. Of the entire world, you realize," and his fingers cup Sei's groin, firm but gentle, knead him with measured strokes to an unfamiliar hardness. "Won't you let me give that to you as well?" And Sei doesn't want Toue's happiness, because he knows far too well what's behind it, but he clings to him nevertheless, lets his larger body press in on all sides until all he sees is warm darkness.

Some part of him is shivering, with a wordless disquiet that isn't even quite revulsion, and he tries to hold onto that part. But Toue's hand draws feeling from his body where he had never so much as looked for it, and he lets himself be borne back onto the bed, and when his hips hitch it's Toue that groans, though Sei hasn't touched him at all.

"There's no need to fight," says Toue. "Just rest. Relax, and let yourself know happiness as well."

Sei wishes he could.

And this is love, from Toue; this is the trap that it becomes within his mind; and Sei knows, because he's built it up around himself from the very beginning, when he met the man's eyes and tried to make him what he wanted. When he accepted the image of it in its stead.

He comes, curling up into himself until he stops shaking - until he stops moving at all, and even the tiny sigh he makes sounds alien in his own ear.

Toue steps back, wipes his hand on a handkerchief. He might as well be untouched by the whole thing; his suit is still immaculate, down to the tidy cravat around his neck, and his smile hovers at the edge of Sei's vision, as much a mask as ever. Sei keeps his eyes down. He doesn't want to know what's underneath.

He drifts. Hardly even notices when he's brought back under the penetrating white light of the laboratory, because he's not here at all anymore. Sei is something else entirely, he must be. But no matter how many reflections he sees and spirals off, he still has that love and that pleasure, and he's still never refused it, no matter what it might mean.

***

The network is vast, and Sei is vast. He can't know how much of himself he has shed, can't know how much more he has to give.

For every fragment, there's just a little less of Sei to go around, just one thinner breath left to himself. But even when he's a weapon Sei holds life in his hands, and no matter how thin he spreads himself he's still here, still breathing, still delivering himself and the world to Toue with every misplaced glance.

He can see the world for himself now, in a manner of speaking. Anyone on the network, anywhere they are, is within the reach of his consciousness. The endless glittering parties of Platinum Jail, like a flicker from the depths of his own memory; the bustling chaos of the Old Resident District, a thousand times livelier and more beautiful than Trip and Virus had ever told him, and ready to be offered to Toue for the taking. Offered to him, and nothing he can do to stop it.

He doesn't know how long he drifts, doesn't think to notice or care.

But finally, among all the minds he brushes by, there's one that makes him start to sing, like a song he can't remember learning. There's one who has the power he lacks.

"Brother," says Sei, and wakes up.


End file.
